In 1890, the architectural firm of Burnham and Root was chosen to design the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The firm had recently completed work on the Rand McNally Building, the world's first all steel-framed skyscraper. The design innovations of John Wellborn Root and Daniel Hudson Burnham would prove somewhat revolutionary---as would the World's Fair they coordinated.

Root originally headed up the project, inviting in architects from across the United States to be a part of the ambitious plan. In 1891, however, Root died, leaving Burnham in charge. What Burnham and his compatriots crafted was something truly spectacular: The White City.

Built in the neoclassical Beaux Arts style of design, the White City was all artifice---massive, beautiful white structures towering above the promenade. Tens of thousands came from all over the world to see it.

When the six-month run was over, the grand buildings were all torn down, existing now only in old black-and-white photographs, and in their legacy. L Frank Baum's Emerald City is a direct descendant of the The World's Columbian Exposition (as it was also known) as was the vision of Walt Disney, whose father helped build the fair.

Of course, the Fair was also about technology. The first major use of alternating currents electricity took place at the fair, with Westinghouse outbidding General Electric. The first Ferris Wheel was seen at the fair, holding over 2,000 people at once.

In other words, it was a spectacle the likes of which I'm not sure we've ever seen since. In many ways, no other event better encapsulates the ethos of the Gilded Age. Writer Erik Larson narrated all of this in his excellent novel The Devil in the White City, which was then picked up by lead writer and creative director Ken Levine who used it as inspiration for Irrational Games' excellent new game, BioShock Infinite.

The Administration Building from the 1893 World's Fair

BioShock Infinite has received high praise ever since its release last week.

While I won't give the game an official number, I will happily join my voice to the chorus of perfect scores the game has received.

It may not be a flawless game, but it's every bit deserving of the praise its received, and I can honestly say that this game is one of the best I've ever played, with one of the most engrossing stories found in this medium.

This will not be a spoiler-free review, though I won't give away the ending, so read ahead with that in mind. Spoilers will be light, but present.

The Story

Booker DeWitt serves as the game's protagonist, your first-person-shooter puppet. He's a grim ex-soldier, ex-Pinkerton, and all around thuggish guy whose heart tends to be in the right place. The game opens to him on a boat headed to a lighthouse, off to rescue a girl and bring her back to New York City to "wipe away the debt."

It's not clear who sent him on this mission or why. But one thing is certain: he wasn't expecting a flying city in the clouds. Columbia, the city of American exceptionalism, white nationalism, and almost magical technology, is at once beautiful and horrifying. It's a world of old-time religion and dark secrets, of towering edifices and galling poverty.

Of course, the mystery goes deeper than a flying city and its strange cult.

It is peculiar to see people praying before statues of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington in a city perched above the clouds. But it's stranger still when you hear a barber shop quartet singing 'God Only Knows' by The Beach Boys on a floating hover-ship.

Speaking of music, the game is constantly awash with sound, with singing, with music both old and new. Sometimes it's instrumental. Sometimes a tear opens up and you hear some rock song blaring through from the other side. All of it is perfect, adding to the plot and the atmosphere in ways that make the game even richer than it already is. I just wish there'd been more of it, especially after the glorious opening moments.

The story in BioShock Infinite is told in several ways.

Occasionally, but only very occasionally, the controls are taken away from Booker and we watch something happen around us. Most of the time, story and gameplay occur simultaneously. I'm a big fan of this type of storytelling, in which you rarely feel as though you've lost your agency within the game world.

The story is also conveyed through the set-pieces. The sprawling city of Columbia is truly something to behold, but it's the small details that tell us so much about the game and the world we're exploring. Reading signs, watching a passing parade, or viewing little black and white films that tell the history of the city, all help us peak beneath the veil, giving us brief glimpses of what's going on.

There's both explicit and implicit racism in the game. The Prophet Comstock and the industrialist Fink have used race and class to keep the population of his little Utopia divided between workers and the upper class, between black and white, and so forth. You learn, through voice recordings, that part of this is due to Comstock's sexual dalliances, which lurk beneath his religious exterior, and much of it is because Comstock and Fink are power-obsessed and greedy.

More importantly it's also very much in keeping with the Gilded Age theme Levine and Irrational Games present us with; a world of company towns and Pinkertons, of labor unrest, of precarious class division bubbling up beneath a gilded exterior.

Through the films, the conversations of citizens, the voice recordings, and the city itself, the portrait of this weird, deadly world becomes gradually more and more clear.

We meet our quarry, Elizabeth, trapped in a tower. It's a clear play on the damsel-in-distress theme, and Elizabeth could very easily be taken directly out of a Disney princess movie.

I don't mean this in a bad way at all. Elizabeth is fascinating, complicated character who plays a compelling role in both gameplay and the central role in the game's story. But she absolutely looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, at least at first.

She has those big, expressive eyes---which Levine told me were designed not so much to make her look like a Disney princess, but to make her expressive even at a distance.

The Gameplay

Elizabeth has been kept locked away in a tower her entire life, isolated but for her one companion, the giant, mechanical Songbird. One thing leads to another, and the two of you make your daring escape attempt which serves as the bulk of the game's story.

BioShock Infinite is not an "open-world" game, and for this I am eternally grateful. Nor is it a game in which you can make a tremendous number of choices. This, too, is something I like and admire about the game.

Too often a game's story is sacrificed on the altar of open-world gaming, or transformed from a game into a role-playing game. Don't get me wrong, I love a good RPG, but sometimes it can grow a bit dreary when every game takes half-measures to give us the illusion of choice and progression. Far Cry 3 was a fine game, but its mixture of RPG upgrades and open-world meandering killed whatever hope it had for strong narrative.

Infinite doesn't fall into this trap. Yes, you can upgrade your powers and your weapons, but this actually plays a pretty minor role in the game. I played on "Hard" (and will play on 1999 Mode my next playthrough) and I died often enough that I was never able to really save up a ton of money to buy upgrades with.

I did upgrade many things, especially toward the end, but it never drastically changed or improved DeWitt's chances. In fact, I ended up using most of the starting weapons more than any of the fancier offerings I found later on. The carbine was my gun of choice, followed by the shotgun and the pistol. On the other hand, some of the Vigor upgrades were pretty powerful.

Vigors are basically magic. You can launch fire bombs or toss enemies up into the air. Or you can possess machines and, with an upgrade, your enemies to fight alongside you. When you possess organic enemies they'll fight until they die or, when the vigor wears off, commit suicide. Creepy stuff.

One by one you discover new vigors, and each has its own use against certain enemies and in specific situations. For instance, an electric shock vigor is quite helpful against certain robotic enemies, while your fire bombs do little good against fire-powered foes. Possession will work on regular enemies but only slows down the harder ones.

Speaking of enemies, there's actually a decent array to pick from, though the menagerie starts to feel a bit strained after a while.

You have your normal gunmen and then your fire-men and heavily-armored opponents which are a grade harder to kill. Then there are the crow-men who can teleport around in a murder of crows and who use melee attacks only. The afore-mentioned robots (Patriots) wield chain guns and can be hurt more if you aim at the gears. Later in the game you'll run into some especially creepy foes, and your first chance to deploy a bit of stealth.

And finally, the Handy-Men---easily the most challenging enemies you'll encounter. These hulking creatures are more machine than man, have a weak point on their chest, and can kill you with one or two well-aimed blows.

Playing in Hard Mode, many of these enemies provide a real challenge.

There are moments throughout the game, especially during "boss" fights (there's not really bosses in the game so much as pinch-points where things get extremely tough for a while) where you die quite often. I love it. You really have to think about what weapons you use, what vigors you deploy and when (as you'll surely run out of "Salts" which are the game's magic points.)

I know in easier modes these considerations are less important, but in Hard (and, one imagines, 1999 Mode) the game asks you to really think about combat and your choice of weapons and powers. Ammunition never really dries up, and it's pretty handy once Elizabeth is around and can unlock dimensions for extra supplies, or toss you Salt or Health packs, but I ran out a few times and had to drop a weapon and pick up something else.

Later on in the game, you'll start to use "tears" to open up other dimensions. You can direct Elizabeth to open individual tears during combat, but these also serve as plot devices, transporting our protagonists between worlds.

You'll find doors that Elizabeth can unlock (with the right number of lockpicks) and secret vaults where you'll find money (Silver Eagles) or upgrades that can be applied to your Health, Shield, or Salts. (Food and drink and cigarettes all help replenish these stats, by the way, though if you drink to much booze at once you'll get dizzyingly drunk in the game.)

You also pick up various pieces of Gear---hats, pants, shirts, and boots---which give you extra perks. For instance, one piece of gear might light up enemies you strike in melee combat; another will grant you health boosts, and so forth.

All told, the gameplay is very good, though not perfect. It mostly consists of combat, but that combat is mixed up nicely with bouts of skyline-riding, a wide assortment of vigors and a hefty arsenal, and a great story that pulses throughout, only dropping off for little bits of time while the action pounds away.

Of course, the gameplay can always be better. More varied enemies, combat that gave us more options to use stealth and stealth kills, more interesting AI.

A lot of reviewers wanted more puzzles, but the game is pretty relentless in its pacing, and I worry that too many puzzles could harm that. Maybe a careful trade of some combat time for some puzzle solving would have been nice. I don't think it matters terribly either way, to be honest, but I can certainly see how it would make the game feel mechanically deeper and more interesting.

Skyline platforming, shoot-outs, and exploration make up the vast bulk of what you do in the game, but what you do in the game is only part of why the game is important.

Back to the Story

This is because, at the heart of BioShock Infinite, is its story. Gameplay, puzzling, combat, the strikingly gorgeous graphics, all of it exists in service of the oftentimes very confusing, but always entertaining and thought-provoking story.

I admit, I really didn't know what was going to happen. I spend so many games guessing (quite easily) the eventual outcome, it was a rare treat to play a game that left me wondering.

I had some guesses, of course, some right and some wrong, but I couldn't guess the final outcome. You might say that this is because the game threw in so many twists and turns that it would be impossible to predict the future. Then again, virtually all those twists and turns are foreshadowed. We're given clues throughout the game. Clues and misdirection.

But I honestly didn't know what was going to happen to Elizabeth, to Booker, to Comstock and Fink and all the rest of the cast.

I won't get into any spoilers about the game's ending (Paul Tassi has two very good pieces on the matter here and here.)

I did think that at times the story took leaps that left me a bit let down.

A dimensional jump to another world in which the city has already gone up in flames made me wish we'd have seen the events that led to the uprising to begin with, rather than just find ourselves in the midst of the action. I realize that all of this serves the grand finale and the deeper multi-verse theme running throughout, but I still felt like some of the more interesting chunks of story were leapfrogged.

Likewise, some of the ending's more fantastical twists ended up overshadowing the more interesting personal revelations.

Along those lines, it might have been more interesting to ultimately make Columbia even more gilded and less obviously a wicked place. We learn almost instantly that the city is deeply racist and creepy, that unlike the first NPC tells you, this is most certainly not the closest to heaven you're like to get.

Still, these are quibbles, what-ifs, not major grievances. Few games pull off a narrative as compelling as this.

Compelling may be understatement. I really wanted to find out what was going to happen next. At every turn and twist I was hungry for more.

Yet, even as I was rushing forward, eager to find out what happens next, I wanted to find as many voxophones as possible, to listen in on the dark history of Columbia and Comstock and Lady Comstock. I don't care about achievements, I just want to uncover as many delicious clues as possible.

The same drive that theoretically motivates open-world gaming had hooked me simply by providing a good story.

Suffice to say, Infinite is the first game I've played in quite a while that I really didn't feel like putting down at any point. I wanted to play it right through to the end, and when it was over I wanted to talk about it over drinks, to unravel what it all meant. Drinks not forthcoming, I wanted to get right back into it again for a second go-round. Of course, since I'm a game critic I had to spill some ink first.

In some ways, playing Infinite is sort of like reading a really great mystery-thriller. You keep wanting to turn the page, but occasionally you also want to write some notes in the margins. It makes you think all the time, something far too few games (and especially big, AAA games) fail to do. It's not perfect, but it is great.

BioShock Infinite is one of those rare gems that sets the bar higher not just for a genre, but for an entire medium.